THE AMERICAN Ireland Fund (AIF), the worldwide network of Irish philanthropists that has raised more than $300 million for Ireland over the past 44 years, has appointed Kieran McLoughlin to be its new chief executive officer.
Mr McLoughlin, from Dublin, moved to New York to become president of the AIF in 2004, after serving as director in Ireland for the preceding eight years.
“Kieran has been centrally and critically involved in the growth and development of this organisation for almost 15 years,” said chairwoman Loretta Brennan Glucksman. Mr McLoughlin, she added, “has shown great energy and imagination in raising resources . . . Under his stewardship we are looking forward to further growth in a still difficult market and delivering for those in need.”
Mr McLoughlin developed the fund in Chicago, Philadelphia and Florida. He relaunched its Young Leaders programme, and organised its most successful event, a 2007 gala dinner in New York that raised more than $4 million.
In what Mrs Brennan Glucksman described as a “period of distress within the philanthropic community”, Mr McLoughlin “steered the fund successfully through 2009, the worst year . . . for philanthropic giving since records began in the US, and ensured that it is one of the only 12 per cent of US charities projecting a surplus for the year”.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is to be guest of honour at the AIF’s next gala dinner, in Washington on March 16th.
Kingsley Aikins, who served as chief executive of the fund for the past 17 years, will continue to act as an adviser from Dublin.
The AIF was founded in 1976 by Tony O’Reilly and Dan Rooney, now US ambassador to Ireland.